A Physical Relationship
by Jujubee1981
Summary: A session with Sweets makes Brennan and Booth much too aware of how close they are. Meanwhile they must catch a killer before he strikes again!
1. Chapter 1

"What is your physical relationship like?" Sweets' face was, as usual, slightly over-eager and smiling.

Brennan's eyes narrowed slightly and she crossed her arms, leaning back into the couch.

Booth sat up and sputtered his indignation. "What?" He finally managed. "_What_ physical relationship?"

"We haven't had sex with each other." Brennan stated in a reasonable tone of voice. Booth squirmed.

"So you've said before. By 'physical' I don't necessarily mean 'sexual'." Sweets conceded. "You do have a physical relationship. Agent Booth, you're physically protective of Doctor Brennan. You display classic dominant male possessiveness. Placing your hand on Doctor Brennan's back or arm to lead her, opening doors, pulling out chairs…"

"I was raised to be a _gentleman_, Sweets." Booth said in a disdainful and dismissive tone. "I'd do the same for any woman."

"Would you?" Sweets countered. Booth glared.

Sweets continued. "Do you hug one another?"

"No." Booth said flatly, still glaring.

"Yes." Brennan said simultaneously. She turned and met Booth's frowning stare. "Well, we do hug sometimes. When it's appropriate." She turned back to Sweets and repeated. "When it's _appropriate_."

"Yeah, appropriate." Booth echoed. "Friendly hugs."

"Friendly hugs." Sweets smiled and scrawled briefly in his notebook. "Very interesting."

"No, that's not _interesting_." Booth growled. "Why the hell are we talking about this?"

"I saw you dancing together at the Annual Foundation Gala last week." Sweets replied. "Well, Daisy noticed it first." He amended.

"Noticed what, that we were dancing? What's wrong with that?" Booth said defensively. They glanced at each other and a silent message passed between them: close ranks.

"I asked Booth to dance with me." Brennan said. "I had been dancing all night with foundation donors and they were all terrible dancers. Booth is an excellent dancer…"

"Thank you." Booth grinned at her. She smiled back then turned back to Sweets with a frown.

"…and I wanted a break from getting my toes stepped on and engaging in tedious small talk." Brennan concluded.

"Four slow dances in a row?" Sweets raised an eyebrow.

The partners glanced at one another with matching wary expressions then looked quickly away. Brennan's cheeks were pink.

"Her toes were really hurting." Booth said lamely.

"Really hurting." Brennan echoed.

Booth's cell phone rang. He answered it. "Booth."

"Hey guys, _so_ not cool." Sweets whined. "I thought we agreed no cell phones…"

Booth ignored him and continued listening to his caller. "Got it. Okay. On our way." He snapped his phone closed. Brennan was already rising and Booth cupped her elbow. "C'mon let's go. Case, Bones!" He announced, opening the door to Sweets' office and guiding her through.

"So we'll just…" Sweets started. The door closed behind the two partners. "…pick this up next week." He finished, now speaking to his empty office.

* * *

Booth hustled Brennan down the hallway, his hand on the small of her back firmly propelling her. They reached the elevator bank and he pressed the 'down' button.

"You do display protective and dominant male behavior around me, Booth." Brennan piped up as they waited for the doors to open. She turned her head to look down at his hand, now gently grasping her upper arm. Booth glanced at his hand and dropped it to his side. The elevator doors opened and Booth let Brennan step in first. He pressed the lobby button and the doors closed.

"I'm not trying to dominate you, Bones." He finally spoke.

"You couldn't." Brennan stated. Booth frowned then stepped into her personal space so they were nearly nose to nose. Brennan didn't budge. "You are very intimidating." She said with her eyes level on his. "But, I know you would never hurt me."

Booth's eyes warmed and his mouth quirked into a smile. Brennan smiled back. They stood like this for a long moment until the elevator doors opened and Caroline Julian stood in the opening. Her sharp eyes took in the scene and she gave a smug smirk. Booth took a step back from Brennan and Caroline stepped into the elevator between them.

"Press three for me, Cherie." She said to Booth. He scowled and did so. She exited the elevator on the third floor and the partners were alone again.

"So what's the case?" Brennan asked.

"Remains of two victims were found together in a shallow grave outside a campground." Booth replied. They exited the elevator and headed for Booth's black SUV and their work.

* * *

"Both are female, late twenties, early thirties. Cause of death appears to be strangulation. Crushing of the hyoid bones in both victims. I'll need to get them back to the lab before I verify that. One appears to have markers that indicate childbirth." Brennan muttered, crouching by the gruesome scene. Booth stood back, jotting notes. Brennan pointed at one set of remains. "In spite of the advanced rate of decomposition in both, these remains are older. The other is quite fresh, no older than two weeks, but last week's heat wave would have sped up the rate of decomp. Hodgins will be able to narrow time of death. Angela can get us ID's from dental records or facial reconstruction."

Brennan snapped off her latex gloves.

"Back to the Jeffersonian now?" Booth asked, pointing the end of his pen at the remains.

"Yes, and the soil around them too. It may hold some evidence." Brennan confirmed. Booth reached down for her hand to help her rise. Once she was standing, they both looked down simultaneously at their joined hands and quickly let go, not meeting one another's eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

"Victim one is Julie Richeson, thirty-one, from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Last seen while on a school field trip with her son's second grade class to D.C. Her husband received a call from the kidnapper asking for a hundred thousand dollars in ransom." Angela spoke briskly, obviously fighting her natural desire to weep in empathy to the family. "The kidnapper gave him proof of life, put Julie on the phone for a moment, and one week to get the money. The husband, David, mortgaged his business to raise the money. He made the drop and never heard anything more. That was eight weeks ago and there are no leads."

"Hodgins put the time of death at least nine weeks ago." Brennan frowned and glanced at Cam, who stood beside her.

"Blowflies never lie." Hodgins intoned piously from the doorway, leaning against the doorframe.

"So the kidnapper must've killed her immediately after making the ransom demand." Angela's mouth turned down and her eyes welled. "He had no intention of returning her to her family. Bastard."

"What about victim number two?" Cam asked. Angela pressed buttons on her handheld device, bringing up new images on her 3D screen.

"Michaela Black, twenty-eight, a D.C. native. She was a real estate agent. Last seen leaving her office the night of the 12th. Her husband, Christopher, was traveling on business in Sacramento at the time and didn't know she was gone until he returned home on the 14th. There were over thirty hang-ups on the home answering machine. He got the ransom call later on the 14th. Same story, this time a quarter of a million dollars." Angela concluded. "They were both redheads – natural too."

"Time of death was around the 14th." Hodgins added. "So she was killed the same day the ransom demand was made, even though the kidnapper gave the husband a week to get the money together. I'm still working on the soil samples. Maybe I can give you an idea of where they were held and killed…and who killed them."

"Tox screen showed both were drugged before they were strangled. Also, no defense wounds I can find." Cam chimed in.

Brennan frowned at the images of the two women then turned toward the door. "I'll tell Booth." She said, brushing past Hodgins and walking out the door.

* * *

Booth was bouncing a tennis ball off the back wall of his office when she walked through the door. She started talking without preamble, as usual, and startled him into dropping the ball. "We've ID'd both sets of remains. They were both kidnap victims, killed the same day the ransom demands were made, both strangled as I initially thought." Brennan handed the forensics file across the desk, Booth took it and opened it, hunching over it. Brennan braced her hands on the desk and leaned over his dark head pointing at various items in the file, telling herself she wasn't inhaling a little deeper because he smelled so good.

"As you can see, the bruising patterns in the remaining flesh indicate large hands, most likely male. Hodgins is still working to see if there is any evidence contained in the surrounding soil." She continued with her head bent over his.

Booth abruptly sat up and Brennan jumped back to avoid having her chin connect with the crown of his head. "Thanks, Bones."

"You're welcome." She replied. "We should have more for you this afternoon." She turned to leave Booth's office.

"Hey, Bones hold up." Booth got up and rounded his desk to close his office door. Brennan gave him her attention. "What do you think about this whole…uh, physical relationship thing?"

"Much as I hate to admit it, Sweets does have a point, we are physically quite comfortable with one another. But, I don't perceive it as a problem."

"Neither do I, you know? So why are we acting sort of squirrely around each other?" Booth cocked his head to the side.

"We're acting like rodents….?" Brennan's eyebrows drew together in consternation.

"You know, squirrely. Antsy. Self-conscious."

Brennan nodded. "Well, I suppose I hadn't realized how comfortable I had become with physical contact with you and now I am very aware of it. I'm sure it's temporary. Our level of physical intimacy is quite comfortable to me."

Booth flexed his shoulders uncomfortably. "It just sounds icky when you say it like that."

"Well, I find our physical relationship, to use Sweets' term, quite adequate and satisfactory."

"You do?" Booth's face fell slightly.

"Yes, given our professional relationship I think it isn't inappropriate."

"Hm." Booth grunted. He moved to open the office door for her. "Well, let me know when you've got more info on the dirt from Hodgins. I'm going to check our databases to see if I can find any similar cases."

Brennan moved out the door, pausing to place a light hand on Booth's forearm and smile gently at him. He glanced down at his slim fingers, briefly patting them with his own hand and smiling back. After the exited, he muttered. "Adequate. Satisfactory."

* * *

"Doctor Brennan!" Hodgins came bounding up as she swiped her security card for the lab platform. "Check it out!" He thrust a glass petri dish of soil at her.

"What am I looking at?" Brennan asked, studying the dish.

"Soil sample." Hodgins said with annoyed twist of his lips. "Guess what? It's non-native to the campground. This soil came from somewhere else and guess what else?"

"Tell me."

"It's covered the bodies of our two victims _and_ it is incredibly nickel and magnesium rich." Hodgins looked at Brennan eagerly.

"What does that mean?" Brennan asked, still not catching Hodgins' enthusiasm. Disappointment crossed his face again.

"It _means_ there are only two places in the area it could've come from. One is a working mining facility but, get this, the other is an abandoned quarry about fourteen miles from where we found our victims. I pulled up the satellite photos and there are empty buildings on the site." Hodgins eyebrows rose and wiggled. "King of the Lab?"

Brennan sighed. "King of the Lab." She confirmed, rolling her eyes.

Hodgins grinned and swaggered back to his station.

"Email the GPS location of both locations to me. I'll update Booth." Brennan called after him. She walked quickly to her office to grab her field gear.

* * *

"Hodgins found the location the women might've been held." Brennan said, walking briskly back into Booth's office. He held up a finger.

"Okay." He said into the telephone. "Yes, thank you. Thank you. Look, I may have something right now. Let me call you back." He pressed the button on his cell phone and looked up. "Please tell me something came up. We just got news of another missing female thirty-two, natural redhead, married…"

"Hodgins maybe have found the location the victims were held." Brennan held out her iPhone and Booth glanced over the information. He jumped to his feet, grabbing his jacket.

"Let's go. If this is another kidnap by the same guy maybe we can get there before the ransom call comes in." Keeping his arm at her waist, they jogged to the elevators. Booth was already making calls.

In the car, a sense of tense urgency consumed the partners as both were making and answering phone calls, dreading that the next would tell them a ransom demand had been made.

"Turn on the siren, Booth!" Brennan said urgently as they bounced down a disused gravel road, following the GPS coordinates provided by Hodgins to the abandoned site. "We're not going to make it there in time…and he'll…he'll…" She turned wide eyes toward her partner.

The muscles in Booth's jaw clenched. "I know! I'm driving as fast as I can to still keep us in one piece. The siren can't make us go faster – there's no traffic right now." He said somewhat sharply. He sighed, his expression softened and he briefly glanced at Brennan's tense and pale face. He reached up and flipped on the siren. "We'll get there, Bones. Maybe it's not even the same guy." He murmured gently. He was trying to sound reassuring and confident, but it came out more like a prayer. Ten minutes passed, seeming like an eternity, until they reached the first of three dilapidated buildings surrounded by rusted equipment and piles of rubble.

They exited the car and Booth drew his weapon. "Stay behind me." He ordered. Brennan nodded. They approached the building, the smallest of the three and Booth paused briefly before quickly and silently opening the door. There were only four rooms, containing mostly tools, all empty of evidence of recent human presence. "Next." Booth murmured to Brennan, earning another nod.

"I should have a gun." She whispered to him. Booth gave an exasperated sigh and paused before giving in and removing the pistol from his ankle and handing it to her.

"Self-defense only, got it?" He said fiercely. Brennan smiled.

The second building was larger and as they approached Booth hissed. "There's a new padlock on the outside of the door." They met each others' eyes briefly and Booth's cell vibrated in his pocket. With a sense of dread, he checked the screen.

"Ransom demand just made." Read the text message. Booth showed it to Brennan, stowed the phone in his pocket, turned to the padlock, and matter-of-factly shot it off. He burst into the building at a run, Brennan following close behind.

The gunshot caused chaos in the building and the partners followed the sounds to a small back room where a short, barrel-chested man had his hands around the throat of a red haired woman. She was fighting him tooth and nail and had made bloody scratches on his face.

"Let go of her and step back with your hands up!" Booth barked, sighting his gun on the man. The man laughed and shoved the redhead into Booth. Booth caught the woman and tucked her behind his body just as the man, who had picked up a shovel, swung for Booth's head. Booth caught the blow on his forearm and managed to slam his fist into the man's nose, breaking it and causing a gush of blood. The man staggered and swung the shovel again, his aim was off but he managed to clip Booth's head and momentarily stunned him. The man made a run for the door but failed to see Brennan just outside the room.

Brennan slammed the butt of the pistol she was carrying into the side of the man's face and brought her knee up savagely into his crotch. He dropped to the ground, gagging. Booth landed on top of him like a brick wall, cuffing his wrist behind his back just as sirens sounded outside heralding the arrival of backup.

FBI jackets swarmed into the room, helping the victim out of the building and half-dragging, half-carrying the groaning perp behind her. Booth was still kneeling on the floor, trying to get his balance after the blow to his head. Brennan reached down to offer a hand to Booth, who took it and rose to his feet.

Their eyes met, locked, and Brennan weakly tugged her hand. Booth tightened his grip and held fast, still staring intensely into her eyes. "Screw Sweets." He said succinctly, lacing their fingers together and led her out of the room. They walked out of the building hand in hand, shoulders brushing, and Booth gave Brennan's hand one last squeeze before a paramedic dragged him away to get his head injury checked.

Brennan stood alone in the chaotic scene. She looked down at the hand Booth had squeezed, it was tingling. She rubbed her hands together, looked a Booth's retreating back, and gave a deep inhale and exhale. Something had just changed in a moment and she was disconcerted to find that, somehow, she didn't know that she had been waiting for this all along.


End file.
